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> As an example, are there two sides to the flat earth debate? If you say yes, then you're admitting that people who think the earth is flat have an equal stand
by lisper 5y ago
> As an example, are there two sides to the flat earth debate? If you say yes, then you're admitting that people who think the earth is flat have an equal standing with someone who knows that the earth is round.
No, that's not true. One can acknowledge the existence of two sides while still maintaining that one of those two sides is entirely without merit.
And in fact it is essential to do this because history shows that simply denying the existence of people with crazy points of view does not make them go away, and in fact often increases their power and influence, ironically, because the denial of their existence is actually evidence that their conspiracy theories are correct, that they are in fact the victims of prejudice.
Flat earth is an interesting case in point. It is actually quite challenging to show that the earth is round in a way that does not require you to take anyone's word for anything.
- causi 5y agoIt is actually quite challenging to show that the earth is round in a way that does not require you to take anyone's word for anything Perhaps if you live nowhere near an ocean and have no trees from which to hang a pendulum and can't afford a rangefinder for lining up two boards with holes in them.
- lisper 5y agoYou would be shocked at how many people there are who have never seen an ocean. You would be shocked at how many people there are who live within an hour's drive of an ocean who have never seen it. There are a lot of things that the typical HN reader takes for granted that are unimaginable luxuries for billions of people. I think you will also be surprised how hard it is to fill in the details of the experiments you are alluding to.
- causi 5y agoThe only one you need details to is the aligned-holes experiment. The others are just observation. You watch the bottom of a ship vanish before the top. You watch a swinging pendulum deviate from its beginning alignment more and more over time.
- lisper 5y agoYou have obviously never actually tried to set up a Foucault pendulum. It is not so easy. You can't just hang a weight from a rope tied to a tree. That won't work. Also, Foucault's pendulum does not show that the earth is round, it merely shows that the earth is rotating. Flat disks can rotate. Also, ships do not always sink below the horizon. The right atmospheric conditions can refract the light in a way that causes them to be visible at a much greater distance than the straight geometry would allow. But this explanation can be inverted to claim that it is the vanishing that is due to atmospheric effects and that the non-vanishing ship is the accurate reflection of the geometry. Falsifying that hypothesis is, again, not so easy.
- MatteoFrigo 5y agoIn fact, the sun at sunset which appears to be above the horizon is already well below the horizon, precisely because the atmosphere is less dense at higher altitudes. See https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_26.html https://www.feynmanlectures.caltech.edu/I_26.html Fig. 26-7 (Presumably this is also true at sunrise, so the day is longer than it "should" be from purely geometric considerations.)
- discardedrefuse 5y ago> Flat earth is an interesting case in point. It is actually quite challenging to show that the earth is round in a way that does not require you to take anyone's word for anything. There's a Netflix documentary called Behind the Curve (2018). There's a guy who keeps running these experiments to prove the earth is flat. But keeps inadvertently proving that its round!
- lisper 5y agoThat just proves that Netflix is part of the conspiracy.
- egberts1 5y ago